Chapter 2: Phonemic Awareness

Becoming aware of the sounds of language

Phonemic awareness

• think analytically about sounds and words, separate words into sounds, blend sounds into words
• awareness of words, rhymes, syllables and sounds; a subset of using phonics to sound out new words
• awareness of words, rhymes, sounds in a predictable sequence
• good awareness makes for better readers, spellers and word learners
• sequential learning process--first children can break apart sentences, then sentences into syllables, etc
• important for reading and spelling

Phonics refers to letters' sounds in relation to one another, reciprocal relationship with phonemic awareness

• for some, knowing that the spoken word 'top' begins with the sound 't' will help recognize this sound-letter
• others, knowing the sound/letter 't' will help them recognize words like 'top'

Phonome: smallest unit of sound--s, r, t, i, etc...
Phonological awareness is a larger concept

• awareness that a sentence is made of words, words of syllables, some rhyme, words are made of sounds, blending sounds creates meaningful words

Rhyme awareness

• identify rhyming words
• think of rhyming words
• separating words into beginning sounds and rhyming sounds

Phonemic awareness demonstrated by:

• separating the beginning sounds from the word (ch-illy)
• isolating sounds
• manipulating sounds
• blending sounds

Taught by:

• teach awareness of beginning, middle and end sounds
• letter names and sounds together
• one or two skills at a time
• early teaching, in kindergarten
• teach in small groups
• instruction needs catered to the child
• show when reading and writing new words
• start with short, two-sound words

Chapter 3: Early Word Identification

• Prealphabetic learners:
  • Environmental cues: using familiar words in context, such as stop sign, M in McDonalds
  • Picture cues: using a picture to make an assumption about a word
  • Configuration: bed = shape of a bed
• Partial alphabetic
  • one letter name: they know the names of one or two letters
  • two letter sound
  • letter-sound connection
  • misidentification: using known letters to assume word (they might think other "m" words are "mother")

Chapter 4: Analogy-based Phonics

• End of kindergarten through second grade
• Onset & rime = /h/ + /at/
• Word families: words with the same rime, pronounced the same, ex. hat, cat, mat, etc.
• Substitute new onsets within word families to create new words (but teaching word families because not all similar letter combinations have same sound, /kn/ + /ow/ is not same as /n/ + /ow/

Chapter 5: Letter-sound Phonics

• Letter sound patterns: letters that represent sounds in words, letter combinations
• Teach letter sound based phonics in a direct way and early on
• Patterns:
  • single consonants
  • VC short vowels, ex. 'at'
  • consonant digraph, creates a unique sound, ex. ch, sh, th
  • consonant cluster (or blend), blended sounds, ex. cl, str
  • VC+e, long vowel, ex. time
  • rules about C and G with vowels

Chapter 6: Structural Analysis

• Teaching K - 6, increasing in complexity
• Analyzing structure of words into large, multi-letter chunks, including compound words
• When a child reads, they might want to use the following techniques:
  • Split it up into letter chunks, or syllables, or into words, prefixes and suffixes they already know
  • Compound words
  • Contractions
  • Prefixes, suffixes
  • Syllable patterns (as seen in Ch. 5)
  • Greek and Latin roots, such as bio (life), logy (word)
  • Base words/morphemes: the smallest unit of meaning, ex. shady = shade + y (meaning having that quality)